Windows 7 Family Pack coming to eight European countries

Microsoft has unveiled the pricing of the Windows 7 Family Pack in eight …

Microsoft has announced that the Windows 7 Family Pack, a limited-time offer that allows you to upgrade three PCs to Windows 7 Home Premium, will also be available in select European countries. The company has chosen eight countries: the UK (�149.99), Ireland (�149.99), Germany (�149.99), France (�149.99), Switzerland (�149.99), Austria (�149.99), the Netherlands (�149.99), and Sweden (�149.99). The Windows 7 Family Pack will be available on October 22, 2009, the general availability date of Windows 7, until supplies last.

The pack was announced in Europe after it was announced in North America because Microsoft was not sure it could offer an upgrade version of Windows 7 at launch. In July 2009, Redmond offered to adopt the European Union's browser ballot screen in order to address competition concerns regarding Windows and Internet Explorer. As a result, a week later Microsoft confirmed that it was killing off the Windows 7 E version before it ever saw the light of day.

European countries will have the same version of Windows 7 as the rest of the world: Windows 7 retail boxes will be available in both full and upgrade versions via preorder through Microsoft online stores and retail partners starting on September 1, 2009 (general availability is still set for October 22, 2009). Also, as we found out earlier this month, customers who have already preordered Windows 7 E in the EU (even at the upgrade version price), or will do so before September 1, will receive a full version of Windows 7.

The Windows 7 Family Pack was first revealed last month when an extra clause was noticed in the Microsoft Software License Terms for the Home Premium edition of a leaked Windows 7 build, and not in other editions like Professional and Ultimate. Three weeks later, Microsoft confirmed the existence of the three-computer Family Pack but refused to disclose when the pack would become available or how much it would go for. Before the month was over though, Redmond announced that the bundle would cost $149.99 in the US and $199.99 in Canada.

Different markets have different costs, Vlasterx. It would seem that Windows costs a bit more to market in the EU. I wonder why? Those who dislike Microsoft's 'monopoly' there should be rejoicing, if they feel MS are pricing themselves out of the market.

VlasterX, the price difference is for Microsoft to recoup all those billions they have to pay to the EU for past monopolistic actions, and for the future ones too. And of course, do not forgot the lawyers' fees.

Yes, I believe that MS is sticking it to the EU because the EU stuck it to them.No matter that it was justified or not,....turn about is fair play in their minds.The extra money may or may not find it's way back into the EU in the form of fines and penalties, but the EU consumer will not see the money.That makes it the "EU-Tax"

Yes, I'd be pissed off about it too. The price difference between the US and Canada is also glaring considering the fact that Canadian currency is almost equal to the dollar.For Microsoft it is all about the money and nothing else. Yes, brother Bill does nice things with some of his money, but the MS consumer suffers. Vista was a joke until the service pack 1 came out making all of the money spent on it a waste. Not long after the Vista service pack 1, we have the introduction of Win-7 and it's everything that Vista was not and more! Nobody's gonna get a break on the price though, no matter how much we threw at that "Vista Dog".

And then Apple sells it's next OS release for $29.00 putting a glaring spotlight on Microsoft.

well, that just sucks. Why are these 8 countries any better or worse than the other? I really don't care about Windows including or not including IE, but I hope Bill gets another new shiny fine for that kind of marketing. € != £. These 8 countries != EU and I am pretty sure that Ireland uses euro, not pound.

Originally posted by adminfoo:So how should it work then? Every company price all products in all markets in the currency of that company's home country, and force all stores to do currency conversion for any foreign product?

Yes, it's that simple.

We in EU get the same product as you in US, but somehow, ours is 30% more expensive because someone is dumb to convert the value of that product to local currency. Use google as last resort if you are weak in math... type "100$ in euro" and see the magic happening :-/

See this more radical example. Lets say some Japanese person makes a toy robot and put a price tag of 1000 yens on it (1000 Japanese yen = 10 U.S. dollars). Some American comes by and says "hey, I want to buy it" and Jap says - "No problem mr. American sir, price 1000 US dollars" because he is "dumb" to convert to US currency.

Even better, why don't M$ make a mistake and sell Win7 for 149 yens just because they are lazy to convert to local Japanese currency?

Originally posted by Vlasterx:Use google as last resort if you are weak in math... type "100$ in euro" and see the magic happening :-/

Yes, I understand. And thank you for treating me like a child.

But you missed my point: it may not be so simple as MS having simply removed the $ and tacked on an € in its place. There may actually be different costs to market in Euro-land. Taxes, personnel salaries, regulatory requirements, packaging requirements, language requirements, and oh yes, the continued wrangling with the EU Commission. It may be that after figuring all these in, they came up with a price of 99€ or 102€, and simply rounded off the difference for simplicity's sake.

Ask them!

As a side note, on my last trip to the UK, I noticed that pounds sterling were going approximately 1£ = $2. And yet prices for things like milk, a hamburger, a cola, etc, were still about even with dollars. EG a burger I'd pay $5 for in the US was going for ... £5! In effect I came away thinking that everything in the UK was about 2x as expensive as it would be at home in the US. YMMV, but it's what I saw at the time.

Tax is not included in the price. Tax is added after and you know exactly how much do you pay on top of the real product price. Besides, why is it more costly to sell windows in UK while it's a bit cheaper in the rest of EU when it's all one single zone? Why dont they increase price in France and lower it in GErmany if workforce has different salaries or maybe taxes?

This model you stated certainly cannot be applied to digital downloads like Steam or Adobe are offering. I have bought Design Premium licence, paid directly to Adobe over the internet, got the download link and now I'm using the programs. Programs cost 1730€ + taxes and it came to the full price of ~2100€. If I was able to buy this same program from US, I would pay it only ~1700$ total (which is 1260€). Why do I pay more for the same product as some american is paying? I'm still using english version, everything is exactly the same as in US.

It's the same with games. I pay directly to steam for digital download and I get charged more for the same game that I download from US servers.

Think about it some more and then you will understand that there is one big scam going on.

One partial solution to the pricing problem would be to allow users from any country to purchase the software to download online from the same site at the same cost. I can buy stuff from US shops online generally & then have them shipped to the UK - with software though (excluding shareware type stuff - I'm meaning the likes of Adobe), they tend not to let you do it.

This is not dis-similar to the region encoding in DVDs - artificially enforcing different prices on other parts of the world & not giving them the option to easily purchase it elsewhere.

Originally posted by Mat8iou:One partial solution to the pricing problem would be to allow users from any country to purchase the software to download online from the same site at the same cost. I can buy stuff from US shops online generally & then have them shipped to the UK - with software though (excluding shareware type stuff - I'm meaning the likes of Adobe), they tend not to let you do it.

Who is the "they" you refer to? You might find it's government. I've had situations where I wanted to ship software or hardware bought in US, to offices in other countries. Surprise! Your shipment sits in a customs-house for a week and we learn of extra taxes or duties or whatever added on by the destination country's government. The local reseller was set up to handle these things; it would have been cheaper for us to buy the product at what originally seemed to be a higher price, right there in the destination country.

Why do american companies always want to rip off EU customers? It started with gaming companies and now even Microsoft is doing it.

150$ = 92.38£ = 105.29€

Instead they steal ~57£ from UK and ~45€ from the rest of EU customers. That is not small number!

What will happen if we from EU start to charge 30-50% more for US customers? Would you like that?!?

Who the hell cares about the EU. You don't produce jack shit.

However, you did place an unreasonably high fine on the company for one of the stupidest reasons in the name of competition, and oh just where did that fine money go to? It also makes no sense to place a competitive browser on a Windows product. You already pay for theirs in the price of the product.

Microsoft is just recouping from your stupidity, be happy your getting Windows at all. It makes no sense to place a competitive browser on a Windows product. You already pay for theirs in the price of the OS.

Originally posted by adminfoo:Who is the "they" you refer to? You might find it's government. I've had situations where I wanted to ship software or hardware bought in US, to offices in other countries. Surprise! Your shipment sits in a customs-house for a week and we learn of extra taxes or duties or whatever added on by the destination country's government. The local reseller was set up to handle these things; it would have been cheaper for us to buy the product at what originally seemed to be a higher price, right there in the destination country.

Wouldn't it actually be cheaper for Microsoft to send ISO files to the UK along with the PDF files containing the cover art for each box and manufacture them in the UK, rather than packing absurd amounts of containers full with these boxes and shipping them? It would probably mean that they could lower their prices on Windows too, which makes them more competitive against the other operating systems on the market. I mean, there must be some form of competition, it's not like they're judged to be a monopoly by some obscure government somewhere...

quote:

Originally posted by SgtCupCake:Who the hell cares about the EU. You don't produce jack shit.

Originally posted by adminfoo:Who is the "they" you refer to? You might find it's government. I've had situations where I wanted to ship software or hardware bought in US, to offices in other countries. Surprise! Your shipment sits in a customs-house for a week and we learn of extra taxes or duties or whatever added on by the destination country's government. The local reseller was set up to handle these things; it would have been cheaper for us to buy the product at what originally seemed to be a higher price, right there in the destination country.

Wouldn't it actually be cheaper for Microsoft to send ISO files to the UK along with the PDF files containing the cover art for each box and manufacture them in the UK, rather than packing absurd amounts of containers full with these boxes and shipping them? It would probably mean that they could lower their prices on Windows too, which makes them more competitive against the other operating systems on the market. I mean, there must be some form of competition, it's not like they're judged to be a monopoly by some obscure government somewhere...

I have no idea where they manufacture the disks, boxes, etc for European distribution. I'm not saying they ship containers full of the things from the US (although they might). I'm saying governments do a lot more things to the business pipeline that coughs up the good you consume than you know. And it gets wackier when a company does business across national borders. Even if the media is manufactured in Europe, there might be some tariff because of the American origin of the software, other inflated costs of business ... I just don't know. The world is big. Different countries do things in different ways, and thus there are different costs of doing business.